


The uses of command

by anactoriatalksback



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Bad Francis, Hate Sex, James Fitzjames's talent for mimicry, M/M, Post-Episode: s01e04 Punished as a Boy, Prostate Milking, The Terror Bingo 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28945737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: Fitzjames has doubts about Hickey's flogging.
Relationships: Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames
Comments: 20
Kudos: 60
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	The uses of command

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fill for the Terror Bingo (square: In no position to command)

Francis walks back to the Great Cabin in the moments after Hickey has been taken away. Slender Hickey, pale and proud with his saint’s bearing and his burning eyes fixed on Francis, Hickey and his sidelong conspiratorial smile, Hickey and the kinship he claimed with Francis and that Francis –

There’s the sound of a throat clearing behind him. Fitzjames is at his heels.

‘What now?’ says Francis. He does not make an attempt at graciousness. Fitzjames’s lips tighten, but he draws the door to behind him. Francis watches him and then shrugs, reaching for the decanter. He swears when Fitzjames forestalls him.

‘Not now, Francis.’

‘You’ve not earned that,’ says Francis, ‘and you’ve not earned stealing my whisky.’

‘I won’t have you half-shot for this,’ says Fitzjames. His eyes run down the length of him and his thin lip curls. ‘No more than you already are.’

‘Jaysus,’ says Francis, ‘it’s taken the best of a distillery for me to tolerate you, Fitzjames. If it’s conversation you’re after, you’ll not like me when I’m sober, and Lord knows I’ll like you less.’

Fitzjames puts down the decanter – still out of reach for Francis. ‘The flogging, Francis.’

‘What about it?’

Fitzjames hesitates before his eyes find those of Francis. ‘You prefer to give the men their own head. I have observed it before, and so did Sir John.’

‘Sir John,’ says Francis, ‘are you going to give me a sermon from Sir John’s hymnbook, then?’

‘No,’ says Fitzjames, ‘But you don’t inspect their kit, or their deportment, as we do on _Erebus_ \- ’

‘On _Erebus_ ,’ says Francis, ‘the crew still thinks they’re on a grand adventure ending in a presentation ball where they’ll make their bows to the Queen. _Terror_ ’s a working ship.’

‘You prefer to give the men their own head, and that may be all very well for the likes of your Blanky. But you see what occurs when you allow the men too much of their own way.’

‘Jaysus,’ says Francis, ‘it _is_ a sermon you’re reading me. I punished the inching little rat, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ says Fitzjames, and Francis watches a look of distaste flicker over his long face. ‘As a boy.’

A vision of the men’s wincing faces, then, quick and sharp as a lash, gone but lingering behind his eyelids. Francis takes a breath through his nose to dispel the image. Fitzjames’s eyes look down and then back up at Francis. ‘For overstepping a line he may not have known he should not cross.’

‘You’re quick to shed tears for the creeping little toad,’ Francis says, and bares his teeth. ‘Caught your eye, has he?’

‘For God’s sake, Francis - ’

‘He’d see to you right enough in all likelihood,’ says Francis, ‘and you might not even need to beg him for it this time.’

_More’s the pity for Hickey_ , thinks Francis. For oh, Fitzjames begs so sweetly. Back arched, arms trembling, tears streaming down his cheeks, thin lips shaping a perfect elongated vowel, haughty elegant prick bobbing red in a riot of shame and rage.

Francis allows himself a pointed smile. The colour rises in Fitzjames’s thin cheeks – an angry scarlet dawn – and he says ‘I will not permit you to provoke me. Francis, the flogging was sufficient. Did you need to debase the man so?’

The cowed resentful stillness on the faces of the men. The crack of the cat. Francis sets his teeth. ‘Will you tell me Hickey didn’t deserve to be punished?’

‘No, of course not, but - ’

‘The debasement,’ says Francis, ‘ _was_ the punishment.’ He pauses and looks at Fitzjames. ‘As difficult as it might be for you to understand that.’

Fitzjames’s eyes snap at him, and his cheeks burn darker, but Francis knows that look, that mortified reminiscent shiver. ‘I will not - ’ he takes a breath. ‘Be that as it may,’ he says, pinning a rictus of murderous urbanity to his lips, ‘the charges against him.’

‘Arrah what now,’ says Francis, ‘will you be wanting to jaw through them all, and me without a drop in my belly?’

‘You’ve had quite a few drops,‘ says Fitzjames, ‘and in any event, I don’t want to discuss all the charges. Just one.’ He looks at Francis. ‘The last one.’ His lips twitch in distaste. ‘Dirtiness.’

Ah. Irving’s eyes on his, dark and burning as he offered up what he had seen, making himself measure out the words without prevarication or haste like an ascetic holding a live coal in his hand, bundling up his mortification with his testimony and making an offering to his God or his captain.

‘Afraid?’ he says, cocking an eyebrow at Fitzjames. ‘In a ferment that it’ll be you next?’

‘For God’s – no, Francis,’ says Fitzjames. ‘I credit you with a little more self-preservation.’

‘I wouldn’t fret yourself about _me_ ,’ says Francis, with extravagant innocence, ‘I’ll be seen to. I’m not wanting for loose holes or wet mouths on the ship.’

Fitzjames winces, then, but refuses to leave. Of course he does; who knows better than Francis the man’s appetite for punishment? Christ knows it’s all Francis has for him, and Christ knows he keeps coming back for it.

‘I meant,’ he says, through his teeth, ‘that you could hardly have yourself thrashed for ‘dirtiness’.’ He looks at Francis, that sudden, direct, assessing look Francis remembers from their first tumbling, the moment immediately before Fitzjames sank gracefully to his knees. ‘You participated, if you recall.’

‘I do recall,’ says Francis, with a shrug, ‘barely.’

Fitzjames’s lips tighten again. ‘Well, then - ’

‘I obliged you,’ says Francis, and watches as that well-loved outrage creeps onto Fitzjames’s face, ‘Christ knows you’d give me no peace without it.’ He steps forward. ‘So what’s it to be this time, then? What’s your price for taking yourself off?’

‘This is not about - ’

‘Is it not?’ says Francis. ‘You follow me in here, you shut the door, you hold my decanter hostage, you try to pretend you’ve any notion of seafaring or discipline or what is in my head or my heart - ’

Fitzjames snorts. ‘I have never pretended to understand either organ, Francis.’ There’s a thread of bewildered hurt in his voice that Francis does not hear, must not hear. ‘And for heaven’s sake, yes, I know, I know you’ve been to the Poles before and I have not, must you bludgeon me over the head with that fact at every opportunity? I cannot help my age.’

‘I don’t see you mending the things you _can_ help,’ says Francis.

Fitzjames tosses his head in a familiar affront. Francis watches him bristle, sees him consider and reject one, two, five waspish retorts that will not sound half as well as he hopes they will before flouncing away. Sees him, once again, tamp down his temper – Christ, what advancement does he hope for by remaining? Who is there to see?

He says ‘Is this what you intended when you thought of the command that was due to you?’

‘What I intended?’ Francis rests a hand on the table – it’s shaking, Jesus, is Fitzjames planning to marry that decanter? Francis stares at the long fingers wrapped around the neck of the thing and feels his throat dry. One drink, just one, he cannot be expected to suffer Fitzjames’s prating sober, dear God.

Fitzjames is looking at him, an eyebrow raised expectantly. Ah, Francis knows this look. The wardroom-dinner look, the Admiralty ball look. The look of a performing dog having executed a passably difficult trick and awaiting a pat on the head. A familiar look, to which there is a reliable – and richly satisfying – answer: none at all. Francis waits, and wills his hand to cease its tremor, and waits again.

He does not have to wait long. Fitzjames has never in his life, his thrusting meteor of a career, learnt the uses of patience. He expects crooning praise and a glistering reward upon the instant he gives tongue to any of the thoughts in his gleaming empty head, and he will race forward to tug at your sleeve if he does not receive it.

He waits for the customary huff, the great and histrionic displacement of air semaphoring precisely what he thinks of Francis’s tremendous churlishness in the face of the gift of his, Fitzjames’s, wit and charm. He meets instead silence and strain around the eyes. The look is familiar, and Francis’s mind hovers like a stork over the waters of a stream before darting down to retrieve the memory: his own face, in the glass behind Sir John Ross’s head in the Great Cabin. His own face as he was trying to explain why they could not winter another year on Fury Beach. Sir John Ross’s great walrus moustache, blowing out with his great blustering puffs, his outrage at his divine authority being called into question.

No, nonsense. A trick of the light. There is no resemblance, none at all. He snatches back his hand from the table and clenches it behind his back. Fitzjames says ‘Will you at least - ’

At _least_? Will Francis at _least_ \- ? That despairing sigh, the last exhausted gasp of a man shackled to his greatest hurdle? The ‘at least’ of a man begging for at least the meagre crumb of human understanding, if not respect? The ‘at least’ that is a last trembling hand across the abyss? The ‘at least’ that cannot but be struck away with a great and violent contempt? Sir John’s immense basset-hound’s face, his sonorous prelate’s voice rolling out its vicious canting blows. Francis himself, holding himself together with an effort of will, setting one foot in front of the other, finding the door. Fitzjames’s face, long and pale in the gloom, awash with a schoolboy’s guilt and a febrile excitement. A fine time now for the man to be so nice about Francis’s treatment of Hickey when he was all but licking his lips at Sir John’s usage of Francis.

‘Enough,’ says Francis. ‘You bowed and scraped and licked and sucked your way into command, Fitzjames. You may have _worked_ for it,’ and he makes sure to linger on the word, ‘on your back or on your knees. But don’t flatter yourself that’s the same as earning it.’

‘Well, you’ve earned it,’ says Fitzjames, suddenly very close to Francis, ‘as you never tire of reminding us. Or so you say. Is this what you intend to do with command? Turn the decks into some sort of stocks? Thrash the men for finding comfort in each other?’

‘Comfort?’ snorts Francis. ‘And that’s what you find in me, is it?’

‘I don’t know what I find in you!’ says Fitzjames. There is a sheen over his eyes, and Francis bares his teeth in triumph. ‘But it is not - ’ He breaks off and looks at Francis.

One push, thinks Francis, one push and Fitzjames will take himself off, himself and his pets and his dudgeon and the thing he wants from Francis, the thing he keeps trying to poke and prod and sneer out of Francis.

‘We can have you on the bench next,’ he offers, ‘steal a kiss from the gunner’s daughter like any slip of a boy. Arse raised to the heavens, all eyes on you. Just as you like it, hmmm?’

Fitzjames’s eyes snap. ‘For _dirtiness_ ,’ he says, and Francis finds his breath coming a little quicker at the serpentine caress of the final sibilants, ‘of which you of course are entirely innocent.’

Francis’s lips curl back from his teeth in a reply, but a large hand is on his chest and he is shoved, ungently, onto his back on the table.

‘What the devil - ’

Fitzjames looms over him. ‘Is this what you wanted? With the command that you’ve _earned_ at long last? Is this your best use of it? You look down your nose at we of the wardroom, you lurk in your cabin and mumble into your drink - ’

‘Jaysus,’ says Francis, ‘are you tearing your hair out because I’ll not indulge you with the pretence you’ve a notion worth hearing? I will not - ’

‘And you only emerge to snarl,’ says Fitzjames, ‘like a mongrel with a wounded paw.’

Francis obliges him with a snarl, then. Fitzjames leans closer. ‘You let your men run to rack and seed, and then fire guns in the air and beat them for your own offences.’

Francis bucks and the hand on his chest slams down. ‘I have tried to be your Second, Francis, and I have been a better Second than you ever were to Sir John. I have endured your sulks and your gibes and your distempers. But you will not attend to me.’

‘You don’t _merit_ attending to,’ says Francis, lips pulled back from his teeth.

‘So you’ve told me,’ says Fitzjames. ‘Very well then, I shall have to find another way.’

‘Christ,’ says Francis, ‘if you think there’s a thing in the world that could make anything like a man of you -’

‘Neglect of duty,’ says Fitzjames, and Francis recoils. The voice emerging from Fitzjames’s thin lips is not the drawling patrician baritone he knows, or the bitten-off snap more typical of him nowadays when Francis has managed to strip him of his last pretensions of good humour. This is a furred slurring rasp that Francis knows all too well, produced at the end of a very long day (and all the days are long, now) and too much and too little of his rapidly-depleting stores of whisky.

‘Brutality,’ says the voice, and Francis jolts at the way the syllables slide together, as though the voice saying them has not the wherewithal to keep them separate. The sounds lean against each other for support, like old friends at the end of a very long, very dark night.

The hand on his chest is trembling – his own tremor, damn the man’s eyes, he’s seen it after all – and even the long thin face hovering over his seems to be shifting, taking on a pouchy, exhausted sag. That thin gash of a mouth is held looser (the better to produce those obscene half-formed syllables), the corners are wet.

As Francis watches, the lips pull back from the teeth in a slow, venomous leer. An ooze of disappointment and inward loathing. The thing is grotesque.

‘Stop that,’ says Francis.

‘Stop what?’ says Fitzjames, and Francis bares his teeth at the whistling rasp he emits, mirroring the creature before him. ‘I’ve not finished reading your charges yet.’

Then there are fingers at his waist, unfastening his trousers and slipping beneath. Francis jolts as the voice says ‘And dirtiness.’

There is a relish in the word, a voluptuousness in the burr and final hiss. Of course, of course Fitzjames cannot resist enacting a mummer’s farce wherever he is. Francis draws in breath to sneer when long fingers close around his yard, and the breath rushes out of him instead.

Fitzjames frigs him with swift, impatient strokes, with none of the almost mincing finesse he typically brings to bear on the act. He lifts his hand when even Francis’s slow and sodden prick has begun to stir, and pulls at Francis’s trousers.

‘Lift,’ he says, and when Francis glares he pulls Francis’s thighs so that his arse is nearly off the table. Then, with an impatient tug, he has Francis’s trousers down to his knees, followed by his smalls. Francis hisses as the chill of the air hits his exposed flesh, his cock curling immediately in protest.

Fitzjames glances about him and vanishes from Francis’s line of sight. Francis struggles up, impeded by the cold, a heavy head and a still-hopeful prick, when a hand once again smacks into his chest and sends him back. He glares up into Fitzjames’s eyes, narrow and intent on him, and on the fingers he is slicking with the oil that Francis uses to grease his sextant.

‘You _did_ follow me in here for that,’ says Francis, baring his teeth in a grin, ‘Jaysus, man, why the palaver before? I’d have obliged you, I always have in the past. Ranting at me like a tuppenny Ulsterman evangelist – hnnng.’

A long finger, slick with oil, is at his hole. Francis recoils, but the hand on his chest presses down. ‘What the devil do you think you’re - ’

A high sound escapes him, a humiliating whistling gasp, as the finger presses in. His hands slam down on the table, and Fitzjames’s eyes snap to his. He does not pull away, and he does not speak. At long last Fitzjames is silent. Blessed silence, that devoutly-wished-for thing, the better now to hear his own laboured pants, the scuffle of his buttons and hands on the table and against the hands that are staying him with woeful ease.

Two fingers now. Doubling the intrusion, the unspeakable liberty of the act. Fitzjames’s long face is drawn and watchful, bent only on Francis. Christ knows what he finds there, what he expects to find. The fingers inside move exactingly, probing, widening, withdrawing before pressing further in. He’s working meticulously and with resolve, though Francis cannot grasp his aim. He’s worked Fitzjames open before, with spit and tongue and fingers, in principle to await Francis’s prick but Christ knows it’s often enough his pego refuses to awake even to the most persistent inducements, and Christ knows too that Fitzjames’s inducements are nothing if not persistent. Francis doesn't belabour the point. He never has; Fitzjames comes to him (and returns to him, and returns to him) with an object in mind. He must achieve it, or at least whatever Francis can provide seems to do well enough for him.

Francis cannot understand what it is that he is looking for until he sees his thin lips widening by the slightest fraction and realises that he’s rocking down to meet the steady measured movements of Fitzjames’s fingers. That his prick – that sluggish and obstinate creature, so often recalcitrant in the face of Fitzjames’s most assiduous blandishments, the slick pout of his entrance – is stiffening, darkening with the same splotchy blush as his cheeks.

He glares up into Fitzjames’s face and wills himself to still, allowing himself a pointed smile at Fitzjames’s scowl. The hand on Francis’s chest slaps down onto the table next to his head as Fitzjames bends in. Ah God defend them both, Francis has awoken Fitzjames’s peculiar and troublesome mettle, the persistence Francis refuses to praise and forgets at his own peril.

The line of Fitzjames’s thin mouth flattens as he searches seriously inside Francis. And then Francis jolts as Fitzjames finds what he seeks: a place inside Francis that spears him with a violent and impolite pleasure.

‘There you are,’ says Fitzjames in his own voice, eyes narrowing. Francis tries to squirm away, but the hand next to his head moves swiftly back to his chest and presses down. The fingers in him circle and press and Francis bites down on his lip to force back the gasp – an outraged sound – as thin milky fluid dribbles from the head of his prick.

He is pinned, by the dark eyes on him, the large hand heavy on his chest, the fingers working him open with a workmanlike and unreverent care, as though he is a lock of a kind Fitzjames has picked many a time and oft. And working him open for what? Christ, Fitzjames has made no move to attend to himself, if he is even stirred by these proceedings.

‘I thought at first,’ says Fitzjames, watching him, ‘that I might tan your hide for you. As a boy.’

Francis’s lip curls as Fitzjames continues, voice dropping into a confidential rumble, ‘But then I thought that I would not then see your face.’ His eyes move to those of Francis and he curls in to say ‘And I want to see your face for this, Francis.’

And a trail of white stuff bubbles forth from Francis’s prick at the words, profligate and eager. Fitzjames follows its trail down Francis’s length with his eyes and smiles, the thin satisfied smile that Francis thought he’d chased out of him.

‘The debasement,’ says Fitzjames, slipping again into that loathsome whistling rasp, ‘ _is_ the punishment.’

He pushes his fingers in again and Francis’s back arches, a hoarse and furious cry leaving him.

‘This is how I ought to have touched you from the start,’ muses Fitzjames, making free of Francis’s voice since he cannot form words, ‘You see now what happens when you leave a man to his own devices, do you now?’

There is a steady stream of the stuff now leaking from Francis, forced out of him by the steady movements of Fitzjames’s fingers.

‘No continence in him,’ says Fitzjames, eyeing the stuff, ‘No _stamina_.’

Francis tries to muster a snarl, and then falls back with a howl as Fitzjames jabs.

‘He forgets his purpose,’ says Fitzjames, ‘that there is glory to be won.’

‘Glory,’ Francis spits at him.

‘Glory,’ says Fitzjames, shoving his fingers in vengefully and watching Francis jolt, ‘Or a way forward, or a world outside his own wretchedness. Men who need him - ’ and he straightens abruptly.

‘Need?’ says Francis, eyes moving to Fitzjames, ‘who needs me?’

Fitzjames’s mouth snaps shut, and Francis sees that aborted toss of the hair. ‘Don’t concern yourself with it, Francis.’

‘You need me,’ says Francis, struggling up on his elbows. ‘There’s no ballrooms here, no silver cups or advancement. That thing on the ice doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about your freedom of the city of Liverpool, or your bullet wounds. You need me.’

‘You are the First,’ says Fitzjames, ‘in name at least. Of course I – we - ’

‘That’d not stop you,’ says Francis, blood alight, ‘if you had the first notion of what to do yourself.’

It had not stopped Francis, after all.

‘If you had an ounce more wit than hair in you,’ says Francis, ‘or a particle of true merit, you’d find a likely man or two, take what provisions you needed, and set off for a rescue yourself.’

Fitzjames recoils, jaw falling open. ‘Mutiny?’

Francis swallows, and then sets his jaw. ‘You’d do what’s needed.’

The blood has drained away from the long face in front of him, save for a broad line of scarlet over his cheekbones. ‘I ought to have known that you would discard the Regulations the instant - ’

‘Oh, the Regulations,’ says Francis, ‘it’s the Regulations running through your head when you clutch your ankles for me, is it? It’s the Regulations you’re reciting with my spunk on your chin?’

There it is again: the outraged jolt, the kindling eye, the quickly-tamped-down shiver. ‘When you can manufacture any,’ says Fitzjames, with a sniff.

Francis lets his lips peel back from his teeth. ‘You can hold the Regulations to you all you want, but they’re not why you’re still here.’

‘You were not made to command, Francis,’ says Fitzjames, curling in closer, ‘you were fortunate enough in Ross to find a First who would indulge your freaks and supply your deficiencies, that is all.’

_James_ , thinks Francis, with a violent access of want, _James, James, James_. ‘Ross?’ says Francis, _James, James, James_ , ‘Jaysus, Fitzjames, that’s not a comparison you want to invite.’

Fitzjames winces. ‘I am not the one _making_ that comparison.’

‘If there are deficiencies,’ says Francis, ‘Christ knows, man, they’re nothing you can supply.’

He lets his head drop, and laughs, a long chortle undergirded by a rattling breath that turns into a wheezing gasp when Fitzjames forces his fingers in deeper with a vengeful corkscrewing motion. Fitzjames leans his weight behind the movement of his bony wrist, the long fingers pistoning in and out of Francis with wet, obscene sounds. He finds the place inside Francis again and jabs at it, violently, without even the pretence of _finesse_. His lips are a gash in his face, the skin around his nostrils very white. He circles and prods, keeping an unrelenting pressure on it as though he’s stanching a wound inside Francis, while Francis’s prick dribbles a darting stream of white and his crisis beats at him with ragged claws.

‘Fitzjames,’ he hears his own voice say, the halting thread of it forced out by the movement of Fitzjames’s fingers as surely as that traitorous rivulet of white spurting from his prick. Fitzjames’s eyes snap to his and a large thumb comes up to swipe at his cheek. It’s wet, Christ, has he been –

‘Fitzjames,’ he says again, ‘Jaysus, man, finish it.’

Fitzjames looks at him, and then Francis feels the pressure inside him easing. One finger slips out, then the other with an emphatic, humiliating squelch. Fitzjames straightens.

‘What the devil - ’

‘You can attend to the rest, I must suppose,’ says Fitzjames, all rallying sprightliness. ‘You have two hands, and a deal more experience than I.’ He raises his fingers – glistening with oil and fresh from Francis’s hole – into the simulacrum of a salute and says ‘You can supply any deficiencies.’

He produces a gleaming white handkerchief from the recesses of his costume and wipes his fingers with a studious care. He smooths down his hair and adjusts his epaulettes with finicking precision while Francis, winded and furious and burning, watches him.

‘Oh,’ he says, in the tones of a happy afterthought, when his toilette is complete to his own satisfaction, ‘your decanter,’ and hands it to Francis just out of reach before slipping out.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on [tumblr](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/itsevidentvery) if you'd like to come yell with me there.
> 
> A shareable link for this fic can be found on [tumblr](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/641150523177828352/my-fill-for-theterrorbingo-square-in-no-position) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/itsevidentvery/status/1353139203169808390?s=20), if you are so inclined.


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